Into The Abyss: A Tale Of Death, A Tale Of Life review

Living on the edge...

Don't be fooled by the lack of suicidal penguins and bear-loving oddballs in Werner Herzog’s documentary about Death Row.

His tenacious curiosity, eye for absurd-yet-telling details and passionate humanism are upfront here, braiding a study of capital punishment in Texas with an incisive, compassionate portrait of life in death’s shadow.

Herzog makes his ethical stance clear (“humans should not be executed”) and rigorously details a triple homicide that spiralled from a car theft. Yet he’s not mounting a defence for the condemned.

His purpose is existential: a beady probe into the lives of those affected by the pending execution of 28-year-old Michael Perry and the murders he’s charged with. Off-screen, Herzog’s canny queries and patient ear disarm interviewees.

The oddly perky Perry and his partner in crime are the least interesting – the glass between the felons and Herzog exacerbates a sense of distance – yet other subjects unload to devastating effect.

A grief-lashed woman’s account of her multiple losses and an ex-prison worker’s death row dispatches offer articulate expressions of death’s wallop.

One woman’s description of an epiphany involving a rainbow recalls Timothy Treadwell’s prayer for rain (when lo, it rained). And when Herzog presents a prison chaplain with the echt-Herzog request to “Describe an encounter with a squirrel”, he gets a revelatory response.

“Life is precious,” the reverend weeps, cutting to the heart of a piercing film that finds affirmative value in the places other filmmakers wouldn’t look.